thedrifter
10-03-08, 04:54 AM
Film tells story of air ace Boyington
SOREN ANDERSEN; soren.andersen@thenewstribune.com
Published: October 3rd, 2008 12:30 AM
It was the Marine Corps connection that did it. It was the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, tie that did it. And, yes, there was a Tacoma component in there as well.
All these factors played a role in turning a business graduate student named Kevin Gonzalez into a first-time filmmaker. His documentary, “Pappy Boyington Field,” will be screened during the Tacoma Film Festival at 2 p.m. Saturday in the School of the Arts Theater, 1118 Commerce St. The festival’s first full day of screenings is today, and it will run through Thursday.
Gonzalez’s film chronicles how a group of Coeur d’Alene-area veterans, many of them former Marines, mounted a campaign to persuade county officials to add the name of Boyington, the World War II Marine flying ace who was born in the city in 1912, to the local airport, making it Coeur d’Alene Airport/Pappy Boyington Field. The vote to change the name was taken in August 2007, after more than a year of controversy. Gonzalez was there with his camera to document the dispute.
Now 42, Gonzalez was a Coeur d’Alene resident attending grad school at the University of Idaho when veterans started pressing for the name change and county officials, for reasons they never articulated, resisted. A Marine Corps vet himself, having served from 1984 to 1988, Gonzalez said he felt a kinship with Col. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, whose exploits he knew from history books and also from the popular ’70s TV series “Baa Baa Black Sheep” starring Robert Conrad.
“That resonated with me as a Marine because the gravity of his legacy kept me focused on doing this film,” Gonzalez said in an interview conducted by e-mail. “I tried to capture the essence of what a Medal of Honor recipient means to people.”
Boyington was awarded the nation’s highest military honor for his heroism in air combat in the South Pacific and was credited with shooting down 28 Japanese planes. He was himself shot down in 1944, imprisoned in Japan and liberated after the Japanese capitulated to the Allies in August 1945.
After a career in sales and marketing following his stint in the Marines, Gonzalez went to grad school to pursue a master’s degree in education. “I did not go to film school and had not imagined I would ever make a film,” he said. But the naming controversy caught his interest and he started to do research on Boyington’s life.
He was surprised to learn that Boyington had lived in Tacoma as a boy, moving here in 1926 and graduating from Lincoln High School. That fact increased Gonzalez’s sense of kinship with Boyington even further. “I have family from Tacoma, four aunts who live in the area,” he said.
In the Marines, Boyington earned a reputation as a drinker and a hell-raiser, and Gonzalez speculates it was that image that made officials in Idaho reluctant to name the airport after him.
“Pappy was a flawed character, and his reputation for hard living and hard fighting was real, and I include some of those issues in the film,” Gonzalez said. But Boyington’s heroism was indisputable, and Gonzalez’s film shows that in the end it was that fact and his supporters’ tenacity that carried the day and got the airport’s name changed.
Soren Andersen: 253-597-8660
Ellie
SOREN ANDERSEN; soren.andersen@thenewstribune.com
Published: October 3rd, 2008 12:30 AM
It was the Marine Corps connection that did it. It was the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, tie that did it. And, yes, there was a Tacoma component in there as well.
All these factors played a role in turning a business graduate student named Kevin Gonzalez into a first-time filmmaker. His documentary, “Pappy Boyington Field,” will be screened during the Tacoma Film Festival at 2 p.m. Saturday in the School of the Arts Theater, 1118 Commerce St. The festival’s first full day of screenings is today, and it will run through Thursday.
Gonzalez’s film chronicles how a group of Coeur d’Alene-area veterans, many of them former Marines, mounted a campaign to persuade county officials to add the name of Boyington, the World War II Marine flying ace who was born in the city in 1912, to the local airport, making it Coeur d’Alene Airport/Pappy Boyington Field. The vote to change the name was taken in August 2007, after more than a year of controversy. Gonzalez was there with his camera to document the dispute.
Now 42, Gonzalez was a Coeur d’Alene resident attending grad school at the University of Idaho when veterans started pressing for the name change and county officials, for reasons they never articulated, resisted. A Marine Corps vet himself, having served from 1984 to 1988, Gonzalez said he felt a kinship with Col. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, whose exploits he knew from history books and also from the popular ’70s TV series “Baa Baa Black Sheep” starring Robert Conrad.
“That resonated with me as a Marine because the gravity of his legacy kept me focused on doing this film,” Gonzalez said in an interview conducted by e-mail. “I tried to capture the essence of what a Medal of Honor recipient means to people.”
Boyington was awarded the nation’s highest military honor for his heroism in air combat in the South Pacific and was credited with shooting down 28 Japanese planes. He was himself shot down in 1944, imprisoned in Japan and liberated after the Japanese capitulated to the Allies in August 1945.
After a career in sales and marketing following his stint in the Marines, Gonzalez went to grad school to pursue a master’s degree in education. “I did not go to film school and had not imagined I would ever make a film,” he said. But the naming controversy caught his interest and he started to do research on Boyington’s life.
He was surprised to learn that Boyington had lived in Tacoma as a boy, moving here in 1926 and graduating from Lincoln High School. That fact increased Gonzalez’s sense of kinship with Boyington even further. “I have family from Tacoma, four aunts who live in the area,” he said.
In the Marines, Boyington earned a reputation as a drinker and a hell-raiser, and Gonzalez speculates it was that image that made officials in Idaho reluctant to name the airport after him.
“Pappy was a flawed character, and his reputation for hard living and hard fighting was real, and I include some of those issues in the film,” Gonzalez said. But Boyington’s heroism was indisputable, and Gonzalez’s film shows that in the end it was that fact and his supporters’ tenacity that carried the day and got the airport’s name changed.
Soren Andersen: 253-597-8660
Ellie